The fabric of community: Textile stores are thriving as hubs for connection and sustainability | Canada Voices

When it comes to fabric shopping, nothing can quite replace the experience of browsing a local store, where the knowledge shared among staff and patrons is almost as valuable as the material itself.

It’s a lesson more people are learning as sewing at home experiences a revival, spurred by the declining quality and environmental repercussions of fast fashion, growing attention to size inclusivity and a make-do-and-mend ethos.

The local fabric shop isn’t just a place to buy things; it’s an important community resource. Neighbourhoods with rich textiles histories, such as Montreal’s St. Hubert Street, remain popular with makers. Fabricland, Canada’s largest retail fabric chain, is growing strong with around 100 stores across the country. Stalwart independent shops from coast to coast are also flourishing.

Bobrowski Textile in Toronto is one such example. Ryka and Abraham Bobrowski opened the Corso Italia storefront in the early 1960s and ran the fabric shop for decades before shuttering the business in the early 2000s. The space sat dormant until 2024 when, after Ryka’s death, her grandsons Adam and David Bobrowski unlocked the doors for customers once again.

The reopening began as an experiment for the brothers, Adam told me. I visited that first week, and was thrilled to paw through piles of couture silks, Irish tweeds and Scottish plaids, playful printed cotton and bolts of European jacquard – most of it dating to before the 1990s.

Word spread after the brothers set up an Instagram account, and they were contacted by vintage fabric dealers in New York who wanted to buy all of the stock outright.

“But we wanted to throw our hat in to see how things went, and it’s been really rewarding,” Adam said.

Steadily selling off inventory with their mother, Lisa, a few days a week has become a self-sustaining enterprise, drawing fashion students, hobbyists, quilters and designers both local and from across Canada.

“It’s about getting lost,” Adam said. “It turns from an errand into an experience, and that sparks a lot of creativity with the clientele we have.”

Fabric is also a pipeline to sustainability, says MaryAn Webb, who sits on the board of Vancouver’s Our Social Fabric. Since 2009, the non-profit textile recycling initiative has been giving new life to surplus sewing supplies donated by local manufacturers. In February, the organization diverted 2,119 kilograms of fabric from landfill.

The goal is to make creative fabric reuse more accessible. The organization hosts weekly shopping sessions at its warehouse and does community outreach through workshops on sewing and mending.

For Webb, a home economics teacher, connecting with other educators is a priority. OSF partners with schools on fabric donations for classroom projects to cultivate sewing skills and sustainability practices.

The fashion and textile industry is one of the world’s largest polluters, and as textile waste increases, “what I’ve seen grow in students,” Webb said, “is the eco-grief coming out of them.”

But they’re also enthusiastic about problem-solving, she added. “It’s not despair, it’s connectivity of a community. They’re very interested in ways to save their planet.”

In Edmonton, Reimagined Fabrics, which specializes in second-hand textiles, grew out of founder Michelle Closs’s desire for a financially and environmentally sustainable way to continue her sewing hobby.

“We want to keep the craft of sewing economical,” she said. The shop’s stock is priced at about half that of new fabric retail.

“There is a level of emotional therapy that comes with retail shopping,” Closs continued. “Especially for fabric – it’s very tactile, and we don’t really get a lot of touch in our world right now. You’re able to feel the difference in quality, the different fibre contents, and how things drape.”

Online shopping also lacks the hands-on customer service and expertise that can meet aspiring makers at their skill level. At Reimagined Fabrics, staff are involved in the full life cycle of sewing projects: customers are encouraged to return for tips.

Closs’s clientele is multigenerational, and she’s noticed an increase in younger shoppers interested in upcycling. They’re also drawn to the individuality and customization that sewing offers. “That’s the mindset shift we need to make: That [fashion] doesn’t have to be off the rack,” she said.

“Brick and mortar is the reason I started sewing,” said Toronto designer Andrea Dixon. She came across her first trove of deadstock – Liberty of London – more than 15 years ago while exploring the fabric stores at Queen and Spadina.

Her haberdashery brand, Pomp & Ceremony, grew out her love of scouring these shops.

“Brick and mortar is the reason I started sewing,” Dixon said.

Sourcing material for her handcrafted ties and other accessories involves weekly rounds: King Textiles for wool, Chu Shing for linens, Leo’s for silk and velvet and Eweknit for Liberty.

“I work backwards: I look at fabric then decide what I want to make with it,” she said.

If anyone understands the creative possibilities – and practical necessity – of in-person fabric shopping, it’s costume designers. Joanna Syrokomla, who won a Canadian Screen Award for her work on digs around the upholstery department at Len’s Mill fabric emporium for ideas.

“Different fabrics inspire entire outfits that I didn’t even know were going to happen,” she said, mentioning a recent mauve dress on Clare McConnell’s character that was cut from a modern dotted textile found at Toronto’s Fabric Fabric warehouse.

There are many issues with shopping for material online, Syrokomla said. “On a computer, the fabric is laying flat on the surface to be photographed. One person’s impression of a sateen is different from another, and fabrics reflect light differently. How it’s going to move and reflect is important.”

Designer Patti Henderson, who worked on coming Netflix series The Altruists, ran a Fabricland in her hometown of Winnipeg before going into theatre as a stitcher. Shopping for fabric online is “absolutely outrageous and too much of a crapshoot,” she said, so she relies on local suppliers such as Punjab Cloth Warehouse in Surrey, B.C., or Gala Fabrics in Victoria. In February, she flew to Toronto and spent a day at Bobrowski Textile.

Fabric stores are filled with nice people, Dixon said, adding that “everyone was giddy” during her first visit to Bobrowski.

“Everyone wants to know what each other person was making. It’s an adventure.”